Based on conversations I've had on various online forums, I have been playing my Atlas all wrong. See, given it's consummate lack of mobility, and relative height advantage, I had been using it as a sniper. A sniper with low power guns.
It is no secret that I favor simple reliable builds. On paper that UAC 5 sounds great. In the real world (Well, the game world) it fails spectacularly every time I need it. This propensity to fail 1/5th of the time makes it undesirable to me. My methodology is always the same. Mathematically speaking, any weapon system you use will be taking space, and weight allowance from another. Since mass drivers (ballistics and missiles) are the more powerful, and less heat generating, I like those.
Unfortunately this isn't a movie and you will run them out of ammo. So a backup energy weapon is advisable. I like to set the maximum number of weapon types to 2 if at all possible. This is because it allows the most damage to be dealt, while still affording flexibility. My build was an Atlas DDC, with ECM, (the whole reason you get the DDC) AMS, standard 300 engine, 2 AC2s, 2 large lasers, (best heat management for the damage they do) over 20 Double Heat sinks, and a metric butt-ton of AC2 ammo. I also added advanced zoom.
You will notice there are no missiles. Any other weapons added would mean carrying less ammo, and running out; or fewer heat sinks, and constantly overheating. Overheating is not a problem I have in this build. The dual AC2s, which fire together do huge amounts of damage/second. My range, given the advanced zoom, is far enough that I can target the missile boats and not be fired back on. When they do the AMS takes care of most of that problem.
The Lasers are great for upping the damage count, or when my side is selectively targeted, which is always. My post game stats averaged 400-600 damage and 3-5 kills with a truly random amount of assists. Not as good as many of you, but good for a casual PUG player like myself. I have had games with 5 kills and 1200+ damage. But I'm not going to lie, they were rare.
So I switched my build to a guass cannon, (for the range) and PPCs. I did badly the first few games because I kept getting light swarmed. This was not a problem for me when I ran AC2s, since they fire about 2x/second. So I dropped 2 tons of ammo, (I had too much anyway) and added a machine gun and ammo. (it was either that or a flamer) I also swapped out the PPCs for ER PPCs. More heat, but no minimum distance. Now the lights didn't swarm around me and I could begin my experiment.
I gave myself a week to get used to the new build. After a while I really felt like I was pounding the other team. Right until the end of game report. I was now averaging only 200-300 damage and 1-3 kills with fewer assists. So the punchline is: While I see where the impression would arise, that bigger guns equals more damage; that is simply not the case.
Also, with my first build, I was able to keep entire lines of enemy mechs behind a ridge, or other cover, while my team closed the distance. They usually had to send at least two of their own to take me out, but by that time my team was on the rest of them. This worked much better than you'd expect. Again, math. Double coverage on me, means an imbalance in our favor in the main fray. The other advantage is that I could keep pounding away while any mech I was engaged with at close range was overheating. More than once this has made all the difference.
So the short story is: smaller, rapid firing long range weapons do more damage consistently, than their larger bore counterparts. Add to this the inherent advantage of not needing an additional "Light-broom" and the case becomes clear. The AC2 is the current king of the battlefield.
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